Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a camera, and, in particular, to a dual camera and an associated seamless zooming method.
Description of the Related Art
Optical zoom is currently one of the most important smartphone camera features that appeals to users. Unfortunately, the physical characteristics of a lens makes it difficult to design a single camera smartphone setup that includes an optical zoom without sacrificing the phone's overall appearance or adding to its thickness.
A wide-angle plus telephoto dual camera module that has been developed in recent years provides the industry with a solution. Since image zooming can be switched between the wide-angle imaging section and the telephoto imaging section in the dual-camera module, the user may have a better experience with a smooth optical zoom function using a smartphone equipped with a wide-angle plus telephoto dual-camera module. The wide-angle lens and telephoto lens are usually referred to as the “wide” lens and the “tele” lens, and the focal length of a wide-angle lens in the wide-angle imaging section is smaller than that of a telephoto lens in the telephoto imaging section. For example, the wide-angle lens may have a shorter focal length, and the telephoto lens may have a longer focal length. Additionally, the wide-angle lens and the telephoto lens may have different FOVs.
However, in the camera module assembly process, parameters of camera modules vary due to manufacturing tolerance, and thus the wide-angle lens and the telephoto lens in the dual camera module may have camera misalignment errors. The six degrees of freedom are based on aligning the object relative to three perpendicular axes: x, y, and z. The camera lens can be moved forward or backward (y), up or down (z), and left or right (x), combined with rotation around the three perpendicular axes—usually termed pitch, yaw, and roll (rotation indicated by θ). Together, these movements constitute the six degrees of freedom x, y, z, θx, θy, and θz. As a result, the user may sense unsmooth zoom preview images caused by camera misalignment errors during image zooming.
Accordingly, there is a need for a dual-camera device and an associated seamless digital zooming method to solve the aforementioned problem.